Japan’s Maritime Security Strategy

In September 1998, pirates hijacked the Japanese-owned Tenyu cargo ship carrying 3,000 tons of aluminium ingots worth USD 3 million after it left the Indonesian port of Kuala Tanjung bound for Inchon, South Korea. Chinese police located the Tenyu three months later in Zhangjiagang port, Jiangsu Province. It had been renamed the Sanei 1, its fourth name since being hijacked, had an Indonesian crew and a cargo of palm oil. The members of the original crew remain missing, presumed dead. Such dramatic piratical attacks had become prevalent in Southeast Asian waters by the late 1990s, prompting an international response that successive Japanese governments would lead. The safety of maritime shipping was not just at risk from pirates, but from a myriad of ‘outlaws’ of international society. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, as well as on the USS Cole a year earlier, heightened concern over any vulnerable potential targets and raised the possibility of catastrophic strikes on international shipping that could close vital waterways or destroy major ports. The ensuing ‘war on terror’ emphasized the dangers of the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the threat posed by rogue states, such as North Korea (Yamada 2003: 25, 31–6; Richardson 2004: 102–7). Within the context of the ‘war on terror’, US-led efforts sought to transform the laws and norms of international society in response to these maritime security threats.

As Chapter 1 highlighted, scholars and policy makers have often derided Japan’s contribution to upholding order in international society as being insufficient. These critics maintain that Japan could employ its material and security resources to a greater extent and does not do so either because of the constraints of the anti-militarist norm or because Japanese policy makers have used pacifism as an excuse to ‘free-ride’ on the security guarantees provided by the United States. This chapter agrees with the first of these critiques to the extent that identity- part of which includes the anti-militarist norm — is a central feature in Japan’s international relations. Where the argument diverges is that identity not only constrains but enables innovative foreign policy. Exploring how innovative power can be mobilized requires understanding how actors construct and reproduce the self-identity of their state through their foreign policies in relation to international society at the global and regional levels.

No actor engaged in global politics labels themselves an outlaw; rather, actors employ this label to designate an ‘other’ as a threat, in order to muster a common response to meet the perceived threat. For English School proponents, the concept of outlaws is central to the theory as it is used to demarcate legitimate members of international society from those actors who seek to undermine it (Hurrell in Bull 2002: x-xi). Becoming and remaining a member of international society entails signing up to and abiding by international law, acting in accordance with international institutions, and being prepared to uphold international order. Those actors who do not do so or challenge order in international society risk being designated as outlaws. Members create a sense of belonging to international society by constantly juxtaposing themselves against an ‘other’, threatening, non-member. Simply put, for an international society to exist, there must be criteria for membership that excludes certain actors.

Members of international society have responded to maritime threats posed by outlaws in a myriad of ways. Whereas Japanese governments have tended to favour deploying the JCG, the United States, under the Bush administration, pressured states to adjust international legal frameworks where possible and instigated ‘coalitions of the willing’ or military responses where it thought it necessary. Many of these responses have been innovative in terms of developing new approaches to maritime policing and instituting a number of regulations regarding international maritime security, but these responses have only served to bolster the capacities of governments and maritime authorities to manage outlaws at sea. International society’s responses to outlaws at sea have therefore been state-centric in design and focused on combating the symptoms of maritime violence and crime rather than the causes. This is primarily because when a state labels an actor as an outlaw, it is identifying that actor as a dangerous and often irrational ‘other’ with which no negotiation is possible until the outlaw changes its behaviour.

In March 1999 and December 2001, the Japan Defence Agency (JDA) notified the Japanese Cabinet Office of incursions by suspicious ships, believed to originate from North Korea, into Japan’s sovereign maritime territory.¹ The Cabinet Office responded in both instances by ordering the dispatch of the JCG and Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to apprehend the suspicious ships. These orders were virtually unprecedented. Prior to 1999, the Japanese authorities recorded some 21 instances of suspicious ships entering Japanese maritime sovereignty to engage in espionage and criminal activities, such as trading in illicit amphetamines for the Japanese market (Ishikawa 1999: 98; Mizoguchi 1999; Okabe 2003), conducting surveillance operations, or ferrying abducted Japanese citizens to serve as language teachers to North Korean spies (Chōbōjikenkenkyūkai 1999: 39). The 1999 and 2001 cases signalled a break from previous suspicious ship incursions: the Japanese government was adopting a more robust stance vis-à-vis incursions into its territorial waters.

Despite the efforts of littoral states in Southeast Asia to patrol their waters (Ebata 1997: 38–9; Hesse 2002: 60), acts of piracy increased steeply in the region towards the end of the 1990s (see Appendix 1). The narrow Malacca Straits in particular is vulnerable to piratical attacks and is Japan’s most important sea lane as 80 per cent of Japan’s oil and a substantial proportion of its trade passes through it; along with approximately quarter of the world’s trade and half of global oil shipments (Richardson 2004: 38). Were the Malacca Straits to become blocked as a result of an act of piracy this would threaten not only Japanese lives, but also the health of the Japanese economy, as ships would be rerouted around southern Sumatra to the tune of between USD 200,000 and USD 300,000 per ship (Graham 2006: 25–31). To counter such a possibility, the Japanese government developed its response to the problem of contemporary piracy. High-profile incidents involving Japanese ships, such as the hijacking of the Tenyu in 1998 and Alondra Rainbow in 1999, as well as the kidnapping of the Master, Chief Engineer, and Third Engineer from the Idaten in 2005, forced successive Japanese governments to address the financial and human costs that the Japanese shipping industry had incurred as a result of piracy. In response to the threat posed by piracy in Southeast Asia, the Japanese government sponsored a number of regional conventions as well as promoted legal measures and dispatched JCG vessels on anti-piracy patrols and exercises.

Prior to 9/11, governments tended to be reactive when securing transportation networks, primarily aviation networks, against international terrorism. International transport organizations usually put prevention measures in place after a particular terrorist incident had occurred, such as infra-red devices or metal detectors, installed after the use of the suitcase bomb which exploded on Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland (Hoffman 1998:18; Price 2004: 330; Szyliowicz 2004: 356). The events of 11 September 2001 coupled with the strikes on the USS Cole and Limburg, as detailed in Chapter 4, revealed to American policy makers and analysts the vulnerability of the US military and global transport systems to terrorist attacks, compelling states to evolve a more robust response (Weeks 2003: 17; Szyliowicz 2004: 353). As a result, the United States played an instrumental role in developing international maritime law in order to bolster maritime security and trade both domestically and internationally in the wake of 9/11 (Rothwell and Klein 2010: 22–3; Scott 2010: 80–1, 89–90). Specifically, these efforts to transform international maritime security regulation have looked to strengthen US defences against terrorists carrying out an attack on US soil, either by transporting materials to be used in a terrorist attack by ship or by using a ship itself to perpetrate a terrorist strike.

In the International Relations literature, Japan is often viewed as a passive actor which does not sufficiently contribute to the maintenance of international order because of its anti-militarist Constitution and the legacy of its past imperialist aggression. Since the end of the Cold War, numerous scholars have detailed how Japanese governments have sought to change the orientation of Japan’s foreign security policy and become a ‘normal’ state in international society that makes full use of its material capabilities by strengthening and expanding the mission of the SDF (Green 2001; Hughes 2004; Samuels 2007). Whilst Japanese foreign policy makers have frequently labelled other actors outlaws, such as North Korea, in order to justify changes to Japan’s security policy, Japan’s response to maritime outlaws has been guided by a dual strategy that provides a distinct role for both the SDF and the JCG. Whereas the SDF focuses on the defence of Japan’s sovereign territory and acts in support roles on international security missions, the JCG is tasked with policing Japan’s sovereign waters and responding to maritime violence and crime globally. This dual strategy is rooted in Japanese foreign policy makers’ conceptualization of their state’s anti-militarist identity vis-à-vis global and regional international societies. Rather than perceiving Japan’s anti-militarist norm as a constraint on the country’s foreign security policy, in the case of maritime security, it has influenced the formulation of an innovative response to maritime threats posed by outlaws.